My Name Forevermore
by Scimitarmoon
Summary: Jack's true identity is a mystery, even to himself.JackXianto. Warnings: slash and swear.


Tonight we cuddled for the first time. Usually you leave right afterwards, turn away from me and go back to your apartment, leaving me alone in the stifling darkness. We both shy away from the really intimate stuff, now why is that? Maybe you are saving yourself for a dead woman, for Lisa, or chastising yourself, or me for her death. Why didn't I stop you, reach out or say 'don't go'? Probably because I'm an idiot. Maybe I'm a little afraid of getting too close. I have a lot of secrets which beg lots of questions which opens up a whole can of worms. Mostly because I have no answers.

Oh, and I can't die.

I don't know how long it'll be until I can undo my immortality (because I'll have to eventually. Nobody lives forever because it's impossible) and what if its decades, or centuries? What if I start to love you -if I don't already- and it's the kind of love that never goes away, like I want to be with you forever. Because I can't. You'd die and I'd have to go on and on without you. Centuries without you. Millennia?

You know, actually, as the saying goes 'better to feel a world's pain than nothing at all'. Would I rather live with the burning memory of love or a big empty hole? I don't know. Like I said, no answers.

Like when you asked me "So what is your name, Jack? Whisper it in my ear, I shan't tell anyone."

I hesitated. A name moved restlessly in the depths of my mind but it didn't surface. I frowned and concentrated. "I…" I used to be a Time Agent once upon a time, I lived under a cover name. Then I wasn't any more, and two years of my life vanished from my memory. The Time Agency took my name too, apparently, but I didn't notice. A hundred years have passed me, and it didn't even occur to me that I didn't even know my own name. I never used it, I mean I only ever used it at home. I _always_ use aliases.

You said nothing and moved to leave.

It seems completely ludicrous. Or hilarious. My name is such a big secret even I don't know it. Until you made me remember that I'd lost it never seemed. I was Captain Jack Harkness, the name felt natural. It felt like me.

But it's not me, is it? What was once my identity now feels like a sham, and this world feels as alien as the first time I set foot on it so long ago. Cardiff is not my home, my home is light-years, years away.

I watched you climb the ladder, half undressed and I have never felt so shy in my life. Scratch that, I've never felt shy in my life. Yeah, I'm an arrogant knob by your standards, always have been and I find the modesty of this era truly bizarre. But not tonight. I felt afraid of the widening canyon that opened where my self used to be, afraid of you leaving and asking you not to leave.

"Don't go." I said timidly. I didn't think you'd heard me, but you stopped and climbed back down. We held each other in silence. I lost myself in the darkness, in my nameless void, and you.

What do you do without a name?

I felt you stir. "You don't know your name, do you Jack?" You said, your voice filling the darkness. I shrugged. "Well I…don't suppose you used it very much anyway."

No shit. That's why it only just occurred to me that it was missing. "But it's me, Ianto." I said. "If my name's lost, aren't I? I am not Captain Jack Harkness."

"Maybe you are. It's a bit like buying a coat in a second hand coat in a charity shop. It used to be someone else's, but it fits you and now it's yours."

"But I stole it." I said bluntly. Plus, I want to wear my own metaphorical coat.

I think that if I allowed you into the deepest places in me and know all of my secrets, let you love me completely, you know, if you could, then somehow in your rummaging you could find my name. You could find out who I am.

But obviously I can't do that.

I guess that's it. My name is forevermore confined to the early years of my life, hidden in the darkest untouchable depths of my mind along with those two years working for the Time Agency. Sometimes I speculate on what it is that happened in those years. Maybe I did something really terrible that they had to cover up, or perhaps I discovered something I wasn't supposed to know about. Hm. Maybe it's best not to think about it.

I drifted in and out of conscious, of dreams of my childhood. I thought my name might be hiding there, in my parents house or somewhere in the dusty wilderness. In my dream I searched endlessly, over turning rocks, kicking up the pale sand but I find nothing. The desolate landscape harbours no secrets.

I feel like I've slept well even though I'm sure I didn't, and we're still entangled in each other's arms.

The radio alarm clicks and sings a half familiar song. You hum along quietly and for a while I just lie there and listen to your voice.

Jack Harkness.

I answer to it, hell I flirt with it, but it's not my name to have. I am no one in this era which is not my own. I was born many thousands of years into the future the present day, but here I am, an impostor in this era without my name. With another man's name. I guess I'll keep it though, because you're right, it does fit me.


End file.
